Pmtbox hires three executives to target larger operators

Pmtbox has hired three executives as it pushes further into larger operators following its recent seed fundraising.

The Orem payments company has appointed Austin Nilsson as Vice President of Operations, Matt Wawro as Head of Sales, and Jenny Lieb as Head of Marketing and Expert Services.

The hires come seven months after pmtbox raised USD $15 million in a seed round led by Tandem Ventures. They also follow the appointment of Coupons.com founder Steven Boal to the board.

Pmtbox sells a platform that combines payment processing, fraud prevention, chargeback management, and payment intelligence in one system. It targets operators with many locations or multiple brands, a group that often manages payments across fragmented tools and providers.

The appointments indicate the company is building out its senior leadership as it goes after larger customers. It is using its seed funding to grow its engineering, risk, and enterprise teams.

Nilsson joins after more than 17 years at Qualtrics, where he was an early employee and went on to build several operations functions as the business expanded. Most recently, he led Professional Services for North and South America and worked with strategic customers.

Wawro brings sales experience from Pluralsight, Liferay, and BILL. He spent six years building and running SDR programmes for enterprise and named-account sales at Pluralsight and Liferay before leading BILL's highest-performing mid-market sales team.

Lieb previously worked in Deloitte Consulting's technology consulting practice before moving to Qualtrics, where she held leadership roles in customer experience, product strategy, and customer success. She later became the inaugural director of L.E.K. Consulting's digital service line, growing it into a significant contributor to the firm's global revenue.

Wayne Hamilton, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of pmtbox, linked the appointments to the company's move upmarket.

"Operators come to us because they're tired of running their business on systems they don't control and can't see into," said Wayne Hamilton, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of pmtbox. "As we take on bigger operators, we know we need a team that can deliver their outcomes at the standards they expect from their partners. Austin, Matt and Jenny have done that work at Qualtrics, Pluralsight and BILL, and they believe that our job is to give operators leverage, not another dependency."

Leadership buildout

The three executives join a leadership team led by Hamilton and Co-Founder Pete Kledaras. Hamilton has worked in payment processing for 20 years, while Kledaras previously served as Chief Risk Officer at CashStar, the digital gift card platform co-founded and chaired by Boal.

The board now includes Hamilton, Boal, Tandem Ventures Founding Partner Alex Bean, and Finicity founder Nick Thomas. The mix gives the company senior figures with backgrounds spanning payments, venture capital, and financial technology.

Pmtbox's system is designed to replace a patchwork of separate providers covering processing, fraud tools, chargeback management, and dispute recovery. It also covers the full cost of any fraud it approves, a model aimed at customers that want a single provider across the payment cycle.

The business is positioning itself around merchants and operators that need closer control over payment data and risk management across larger, more complex estates. That market includes businesses running many sites or brands, where payment approval, fraud losses, and processing costs can materially affect margins.

With fresh funding in place and a broader leadership bench assembled, pmtbox is adding operational, sales, and marketing oversight as it seeks to deepen its reach among larger operators. Nilsson, Wawro, and Lieb each bring experience from software and payments groups that have sold to larger corporate customers.